Reviews - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 19, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Raspberry Pi SSD Kit and Class A2 microSD cards review with Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi SSD Kit Class A2 MicroSD card review

Selecting a microSD card, and to a lesser extent an SSD, for your Raspberry Pi may feel like walking through a landmine field with fake microSD cards that may perform poorly and severely impact the performance and/or reliability of your Raspberry Pi, and you’ll find plenty of articles helping you select a good microSD card for your Raspberry Pi. That’s probably why Raspberry Pi Holdings decided to launch its own Raspberry Pi-branded class A2 microSD cards and NVMe SSDs, so users can be sure they got a certified storage device that should perform as advertised as long as they purchase those from some authorized resellers. The company sent me 32GB and 64GB Raspberry Pi microSD cards and a 256GB Raspberry Pi SSD kit for testing, so I’ll test those in this review and compare them against other SSDs and microSD cards I’m currently using. Since we’ve not covered the new […]

November 17, 2024November 18, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite review – A low-cost Intel Processor N100 mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite mini PC review windows 11

We’ve already checked the hardware of the GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite mini PC with an unboxing and teardown in the first part of the review. It is a low-cost mini PC based on an Intel Processor N100 CPU, coupled with 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, a 256GB M.2 SATA SSD, dual Display output through HDMI and DisplayPort connector, GbE, WiFi 6E, and a 9-pin expansion header port – as found in some NUC model – to access an external power button, reset button, and LEDs when housed in a cabinet or kiosk. You’ll find the full Mini Air 12 Lite specifications in our previous article about it. We’ve now had more time to test the mini PC, so we’ll report our experience with the Mini Air12 Lite running Windows 11 Pro operating system in the second part of the review. We’ll go through a software overview, test most of the features, run […]

November 12, 2024November 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

GEEKOM GT1 Mega Review – Part 2: An Intel Core 9 Ultra 185H Meteor Lake “AI” mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

I’ve already gone through the specifications, an unboxing, and a teardown of the GEEKOM GT1 Mega AI mini PC powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H “Meteor Lake” processor with 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD in the first part of the review. I’ve now had more time to play with the GEEKOM GT1 Mega, so I will report my experience with Windows 11 Pro operating system in the second part of the review testing features, running benchmarks including an AI benchmark, evaluating networking and storage performance, testing the thermal design while under stress, and taking measurements for fan noise and power consumption. Software overview and features testing Going to the System->About window in the Settings confirms we have a GT1-Mega mini PC powered by a 2.50 GHz (base frequency) Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor with 32GB of RAM running Windows 11 Pro 23H2 build […]

November 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Maxtang T0-FP750 review – Part 3: An AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC tested with Ubuntu 24.04

Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC Ubuntu 24.04 review

We’ve already checked out the hardware of the Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC with an unboxing and a teardown in the first part of the review, before thoroughly testing the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC in Windows 11 Pro. The time has now come to report our experience with Ubuntu 24.04, and more exactly Ubuntu 24.04.1 “dot” release, with the Maxtang T0-FT750 mini PC in the final part of the review. This will include a software overview, feature tests, benchmarks, storage and USB performance evaluation, 2.5Gbps Ethernet and WiFi 6 network performance tests, a stress test to check for thermal and/or power throttling, and fan noise and power consumption measurements. We will also compare the results of the Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC in Ubuntu 24.04 against the ones for the earlier Maxtang MTN-FP750 mini PC using AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU which we tested with Ubuntu 22.04. Ubuntu 24.04 system […]

November 8, 2024November 17, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite Review – Part 1: Unboxing, teardown, and first boot

GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite is a mini PC based on Intel Processor N100 CPU whose unique feature is to include an external 9-pin expansion header port for expansion to add an external power button, a reset button, and a few LEDs. As its name implies, it’s also a cheaper version of the GEEKOM Mini Air12 that ships with 8GB DDR4-3200 memory and a 256GB NVMe SSD. The mini PC also features HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3, and six USB 3.2/2.0 ports. GEEKOM sent us a sample of the Mini Air12 Lite for review. So today, we’ll start by checking out the hardware with an unboxing and teardown, before trying to boot it up, and we’ll then test the system in more detail with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04.1 in the next parts of the review. GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite unboxing We received the […]

November 7, 2024November 8, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

iKOOLCORE R2 Max 10GbE mini PC review – Part 1: Unboxing, teardown, and first boot

Dual 10GbE Dual 2.5GbE Intel N100 mini PC soft router

iKOOLCORE R2 Max is an Alder Lake-N mini PC, server, and soft router equipped with two 10GbE and two 2.5GbE ports and offered with either an Intel Processor N100 quad-core CPU, or a more powerful Intel Core i3-N305 octa-core processor. When iKOOLCORE offered me an R2 Max sample for review, I explained I did not own any 10GbE networking gear. So the company decided to send me two samples for testing 10 Gbps Ethernet networking: a fanless Intel N100 model and an actively-cooled Core i3-N305 model. Since we’ve already gone through the specifications in the first article, I’ll start the iKOOLCORE R2 Max review with an unboxing, a teardown, and a first boot. In the second part of the review, I’ll use Proxmox, OpenWrt, Ubuntu, and/or other operating systems to test the devices using one as a DUT (Device Under Test) and the other as a 10GbE server. iKOOLCORE R2 […]

October 31, 2024November 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

GEEKOM GT1 Mega AI mini PC Review – Part 1: Specifications, unboxing, teardown, and first boot

GEEKOM GT1 Mega is an AI mini PC based on the latest Intel Core Ultra 5/7/9 Meteor Lake processor. We received a review sample from the company with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H SoC, 32GB DDR5 memory, and a 2TB NVMe SSD as well as an Intel BE200 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 module. As usual, we’ll do a three-part review starting with an article with the specifications, an unboxing, and a teardown followed by a thorough review with the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro operating system, and finally with the latest Ubuntu 24.04.1 OS. GEEKOM GT1 Mega specifications GEEKOM provides the following specifications for the GT1 Mega mini PC and motherboard: Meteor Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Core Ultra 9 185H 16-core (6P+8E+2LPE) processor @ 2.5 / 3.8 / 5.1 GHz (Turbo) with 24MB cache, 8x Xe-cores Intel Arc graphics @ 2.35 GHz, Intel AI Boost NPU; […]

October 25, 2024 by Paisit Wongsongsarn - 31 Comments

SONOFF ZBMINIR2 review – A mini Zigbee switch & Zigbee router tested with eWeLink and Home Assistant

We have received another Zigbee device from SONOFF for review, namely the ZBMINIR2 which we’ll review with both eWelink adn Home Assistant. Many people may be familiar with the first-generation mini Zigbee Switch that SONOFF released in 2020, known as the ZBMINI. ZBMINI was one of the early Zigbee Switch models, which also acted as a Zigbee Router. The ZBMINIR2 is SONOFF’s second-generation mini Zigbee Switch including both software and hardware upgrades compared to its predecessor. Improvements include a smaller size, better signal quality, an increase in the number of supported devices (2x), wider coverage (5x), and additional features. Let’s dive into the details. Unboxing ZBMINIR2 Zigbee switch Inside the box, you’ll find a small user manual and the ZBMINIR2 device as usual. It is notably smaller than the predecessor model, which makes installation much easier in many cases. For example, it can now fit into the wall box behind […]